I wish it could be 1999 again...

June 24, 2005 3:22 PM

In one year I will leave old Europe for a sunny side of this planet : indian ocean or french polynesia, It leaves me enough time to learn some new skill(s) in the IT field, Do you have any idea ? what will be the next wave ? ( beside taking english course ... )

I actually work on GUI and already know html, css and PHP...

posted by luis huiton to Technology (8 answers total)

Learn as many programming languages as you can, learn networking inside and out (and be prepared to rattle off the OSI layers at job interviews) and, above all else, learn the fundamental theories of modern operating systems; not just how to make them do what you want them to do, but how they actually work internally.

As for the next wave? I don't know, IT seems like a dead end these days. Too many people out there looking for jobs, many of whom will work more cheaply than you will.
posted by cmonkey at 4:13 PM on June 24, 2005

current wave web gui is ajax, which might be ruby on rails if comments here in the past are anything to go by.

more generally, ubiquitous networking (p2p of some kind - jini, for example), and for more "heavyweight" processing, grid computing.

maybe a declarative language will finally make the big time (ocaml, haskell, etc). erlang ties in with the emphasis on networking.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:43 PM on June 24, 2005

If it were me, I'd specialise in network security. Huge growth area.
posted by blag at 4:58 PM on June 24, 2005

I second the network/information security.
posted by borkencode at 5:01 PM on June 24, 2005

bleagh - jxta, rather than jini (although jini is kind of connected).
posted by andrew cooke at 5:01 PM on June 24, 2005

"Agile" development practices. This is a form of working, rather than technology so is a more general and useful thing to learn. Test-first development, also.
posted by wackybrit at 6:01 PM on June 24, 2005

hmm. i'd extend wackybrit's comment by saying that any kind of formal process is good. knowing what cmm is. knowing what uml is (and how it could used in some kind of iterative development process, which isn't perhaps "agile", but isn't waterfall either). requirements analysis. use cases. these aren't as trendy as "extreme programming", but i suspect a lot of places would like to see them on a cv.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:16 PM on June 24, 2005

Not sure how impressive it looks on a resume, but this looks like it'd be really, really fun to play with.
posted by ori at 11:20 PM on June 24, 2005